


it's all wrong, but it's all right

by juniperpines



Category: Mad Men
Genre: F/M, Pregnancy, ficlet(s), so sorry about this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-16 22:38:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4642683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniperpines/pseuds/juniperpines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was an accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Do enough pregnancy-related headcanons equal a story? Let's find out.

It was an accident.

“I don’t know how,” Stan said, more in awe of the thing than really trying to puzzle it out. Peggy was in her bathrobe and still had her head in her hands. “It must’ve been like taking the beach at Normandy.”

“You don’t have to sound so proud of yourself.”

The doctor explained half of it -- the antibiotics Peggy was taking for a nagging throat infection had been undoing the good work of her birth control pill. Stan thought of the mornings he had watched her at the mirror, the little tab on her tongue, and of all the ritual gone to waste.

“What about the condoms?” he asked her over the phone, between bites of a sandwich on what should have been his lunch break. He was too wound up to go out on his own when he knew Peggy was at the doctor. His phlegmatic office mate was on vacation, almost like he knew this was coming and blocked out the week on his calendar. “We were careful.”

“I thought we were, too.” Peggy sounded severely put out, like any time she put 110 percent into something and didn’t see the payoff. “He said there’s always an exception.”

“The ninety-ninth percentile, you oughta like that.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Come on, it’s a little funny.” His hand curled around the bottom of the receiver. “You’re fertile, baby. Fecund. A delta in the desert sands.”

“I’m *pregnant,*” she said, for the first time, and hung up on him, but he could tell she was trying not to laugh.


	2. Chapter 2

Peggy was kind of opaque about it after that, and they had a deadline. Getting all of her revisions approved in between throwing up was the most important thing for the next week.

It wasn’t that knocking a girl up didn’t freak him out on some level, but that Peggy could be trusted to do that for both of them. Partnership was important. And then she asked for some space, which wasn’t unusual. He only started to feel uneasy about the whole thing after he gave her some time to think or brood or hatch, and in his gut it started to feel like she was pulling away.

That was how he ended up at her apartment with dinner instead of wine, without calling first. He half expected an argument at the door, but Peggy answered it wearing pajama bottoms and a heavy sweater, and let him in.

She watched some of the Sonny and Cher show, and Stan watched her pick at her ravioli. “Do you know what you want to do?” he finally asked, since it didn’t seem like she was going to say anything.

“What I want to do is pretend like this isn’t happening.” She split a piece of pasta diagonally with her fork and picked the filling out, no intention of eating it. “But that’s not going to work.”

“Whatever you decide, I want you to know I’m along for the ride.”

“Really.” Peggy decapitated another piece of pasta. “This isn’t what you signed up for.”

“Hey, I didn’t ‘sign up’ for anything.”

“Exactly.” She picked up both their plates and took them to the kitchen, dropping them in the sink without scraping any of the food off.

He followed her, leaving Cher’s high-voiced punchline and the canned laugh track in the living room. “We can fight about this, if you want. I just want you to know that I’m going to support whatever you want to do.”

“Whatever *I* want. Like you don’t care either way.”

“I didn’t say that. I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

Peggy pursed her lips, like what he was saying was the craziest shit she’d ever heard. “I didn’t ask you to. Would it kill you to express an opinion? You obviously have one.”

“It’s your decision!” It pissed him off when she got this way. Sometimes it was like he had to show up so she could have a conversation with herself.

Peggy shook her head. Her hands curled around the edge of counter behind her. “It’s not… It’s not a decision. I mean, I’m going to hell anyway, and it’s legal and everything, but I can’t get rid of it.”

He breathed out. “Okay...”

“...I just can’t. I thought about it, and… so I’m going to have it.” Peggy looked up at him, looking conflicted and kind of miserable about it, but certain, too.

“You know, we can have a baby, Peggy,” he said. “We’re adults, we have good jobs. I love you. It’s something people do.”

“Do you want to have a baby with me?”

“Sure.” They hadn’t talked about kids, not really, but every time he’d thought about getting her pregnant this week, he’d liked it. Something he’d spent his entire adult life trying to avoid should have been a more ambivalent feeling, he’d thought, and hadn’t let himself get attached to it.

“It’s all backward,” Peggy said, almost pouting now. “And it wasn’t in the three-year plan.”

Stan smiled. “We’ll make it work. Plans are stupid.” He brushed his fingers through the ends of her hair, and that was all the encouragement she needed to come closer and wrap her arms around his middle.

“I’m going to get so fat. I did last time.”

“So what?" He shrugged gently, and let his nose touch the crown of her hair. Her sweater was scratchy against the smooth calluses on his fingers. "And things don’t have to be the same as last time.”

“I guess not." She sniffled a little. "They’re already different.” And he thought that might have been the nicest thing she’d ever said to him.


	3. Chapter 3

Don liked to call Peggy in for meetings under vague auspices. Sometimes he talked around the outskirts of an idea, other times he picked her brain as freely as a bird in a berry tree. She had other demands on her time, but she didn’t always feel like she could say no.

He had come back from California a few weeks after the phone call, lightened in some way that she was still waiting to wear off. He seemed re-energized by the job of selling himself back to Jim Hobart. Peggy happened by the outer office of the executive suite after The Meeting, lingering over a secretary’s desk while she caught the network of firm handshakes and forward-looking smiles.

She didn’t know what was happening in his personal life and told herself that she didn’t really care. The pictures of his children on his desk seemed more current than often; that was all Peggy noticed. She wasn’t as dependent on Don as she used to be, and she didn’t observe him as closely as she once had.

That afternoon, she closed her folder and waited for him to finish talking to himself. How she could have ignored all of this before, she didn’t know. Telling herself her feet ached because she wasn’t used to being in an office all day, or she was nauseous in the mornings because she didn’t know which part of her work Joan would choose to hold up for scrutiny that day. No, her middle was beginning to thicken, her back ached, and she was so tired that she had taken to going to bed almost as soon as she got home from work. She was terrible company, worse than usual, falling asleep with her shoes on. She couldn’t stop thinking about the future, and she couldn’t seem to do much more than take care of each day as it passed.

She always felt like she had to wrestle things in her life into existence with great effort, not always with great results. This new thing was ticking along on its own, with an ease that made her wonder how much it was hers to begin with. And the cause of it all was so clear and present, weighing right now on a tired muscle in her back. She pressed a hand to her side underneath her blazer, arching her spine and searching for some relief.

“Jesus, Peggy,” Don said.

 

 

 

“So Don knows,” Peggy said as the train pulled out of the station. The boundary between work and home was porous, but it did exist. On the 1 line, it lay somewhere around 66th St and Lincoln Center. “I didn’t tell him, he just… saw.”

“So does Dad approve?”

“What?” Peggy scrunched her nose in distaste. “Get real. Don doesn’t think of me that way.”

Stan lifted his chin a little and smirked, while his eyes tracked another late evening commuter making his way past Peggy’s shoulder in the aisle. His arm lay across the back of the seat. “Whatever you say.”

“I don’t care, what he thinks.”

“Yes you do. What did he say?”

“You know Don.” Her hand twitched on the strap of her bag. She might have gone for a cigarette if it wasn’t forbidden on the train, although the subway rules didn’t stop all kinds of people from doing all kinds of things. “Actually, he was kind of weird about it. He said congratulations. But that was after some rambling about choices and the mistake of trying to avoid mistakes. It was all kind of cryptic.”

“Get out your decoder ring, Agent 99.” Peggy shot him a dirty look. “Look, people are going to try and tell you things… things about their kids, or about when they were kids, and how their parents were the fuck-ups. It’s not about you.”

“It is about me.” Peggy let her hand slip behind her purse and over her stomach.  She'd done the same thing in Don’s office while he was talking, though her stomach didn't feel truly rounded enough yet for the gesture.

He glanced back over his shoulder toward the back of the car. “I’m just saying, he’s been there before.”

“Not exactly.”

“You know what I mean,” he said, easy.

“I told him I’m not quitting.” Peggy's voice was firm, and barely loud enough to be heard over the rattle and whistle of the train. “And I’m not going to let them force me out, either.”

“Well, he may actually be able to do something about that.” Making guesses about the futures market of Don’s influence at McCann was no casual business, it didn’t need to be said. Nor that she had no clearer avenue to try.

Stan was watching her. Pale, underground light washed rhythmically across his face. “Pretty soon everyone is going to be able to tell,” he pointed out.

It was a practical thing to say -- if they wanted to take the lead in how this would play out at work, now was the moment -- but Peggy’s eyes narrowed, accusing. “You *like* it.”

“So?"

The train stopped, and even though it wasn't as crowded as the commute hour, she let him usher her off with his hand at the small of her back. There was a thin sea of people on the platform, and it was easier to navigate together.  “You’re such a neanderthal,” she said as they climbed the steps up to the streets.

He shrugged, his hand still trailing lightly at her waist.  “And you’re having my cave baby.”


	4. Chapter 4

Peggy was in her fifth month when Joyce showed up for coffee twenty minutes late, carrying a brown shopping bag of squabbling ducklings.

“What in the world?”

“For a photoshoot. Naked girl, baby ducks.” She waved her hand, self-explanatory.

Peggy eyed her. “That sounds about right. What are you going to do with them afterward?” She chucked one under its downy chin, and yelped a little when it nipped at her. “You can’t let them out at some pond in a park. They’re too little.”

“I’ll figure something out. Do you want them? Maybe you can work in a little practice.”

“No way,” she said, although she was charmed. “Why ducks and naked ladies, anyway?”

“Easter,” Joyce said around a mouthful of rugelach. “You know we’re always six months ahead in magazines.”

“Oh, right. Six months ahead.” Peggy’s laugh was particularly artificial.

“A frightening interval,” Joyce read from her expression. At Easter, she would have a six week-old baby, if all went according to plan. “How is it all going?”

Peggy considered. “Well, I finally told my mother, over the phone.”

“You’re such a coward, Peggy Olson.”

“That’s what Stan said. As far as I was concerned, it was that or show up at Thanksgiving like a balloon that got loose from the parade.” She stirred her coffee and set the spoon next to the cup on the saucer. “I don’t know. I think he wanted to go to Brooklyn and prove that he could sit through whatever she had to throw at us, but what’s the point? She was going to be pissed either way, and after pregnant, unmarried, and living in sin, I figured it wouldn’t really rate.”

“You’d think she’d be happy that you’re finally reproducing. At this point, if I brought a baby home, my mother wouldn’t care if I’d snatched it off the Staten Island Ferry.”

Peggy thought of the state of New York and God and everyone who had made that decision for her the last time. She couldn’t have managed it back then, but no one else saw it as anything but a problem, either. “She doesn’t look at it that way.”

“So, update me on living with bearded sin.”

“We might get Jell-O. He’s very excited about that.”

Joyce shook her head at them both.

 

 

 

Peggy walked home with a single duckling under her arm.  Stan was listening to records on the couch with headphones on.  She dropped the little creature in his lap and hid a smile as he startled and scrambled to sit up, slinging the headphones behind his neck.  “What the hell?”

She sat down next to him and set her hat on the coffee table.  “Joyce sends her love.”

Stan had the squirming duckling wrapped in his two large hands.  “Thank her for me.”

“I want us to move in together,” Peggy said abruptly.  “We keep saying we’re going to do it, but I’m sick of someday, and half of your stuff is already here, and you almost never go back to your place anymore.  And it’s complicated because I own this place, and we’ll have to figure that out.  Everybody already assumes we are.  I just want it to be done so I can think about other things.”

“Okay, you lunatic,” he said, as he went to the bedroom to find a shoebox for the duckling.

Peggy kicked off her shoes, leaned back into the sofa, and sighed contentedly.


	5. Chapter 5

Stan rolled over and buried his head under a pillow when the phone rang, disturbing the cat.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he growled. It kept ringing.

Sticking his nose out, he stole a glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was after midnight. He grunted, muffled, and finally rolled back over and stretched across the empty side of the bed for the receiver.

“Where are you?” He shoved the pillow behind his back indignantly and reached for the ashtray, but there was nothing within reach for him to smoke. The cat edged away knowingly and leapt from the end of the bed in a neat arc.

“In the office,” Peggy said.

“I thought you were coming back here after dinner.”

“Wanted to think.” The sound of a drawer opening and shutting came through muffled on the line, and Stan suppressed any interest in what she might be reaching for.

“So, did you let him pay?”

“Is that what you were so pissy about?” Peggy knew exactly what he was talking about, even though the fight was as old as the leftovers still haunting her fridge from the last weekend. He’d taken her out for dinner, they ended up talking about work as usual, bitching about Don’s latest crusade. When the check came she grabbed for it, he’d grabbed back, and somehow it escalated to her insisting on splitting the check down to the penny while the maitre d’ waited and watched.

“Well did you?”

“Well, yeah.”

“That is so…” he huffed, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling as he grabbed the phone base and set it in his lap, in the bedcovers. There had to be some cigarettes on Peggy’s side if he reached over far enough to get to her nightstand drawer. “So what did he want?”

“Something about pantyhose and baby food and thinking like a woman.”

“What?” He grasped the crumpled pack between his fingers and juggled the receiver under his chin.

“Don has some bright ideas about my future in advertising.” Over the line, Peggy’s voice sounded clipped and strained, the way she got when she was about to launch off into some other stratosphere.

“Did he buy you a coke?” She snorted out a grudging laugh, and he forgave her a little bit, forgave her because he knew how to make her laugh at midnight on a weekday over the phone from her bed when she was in a snit with herself in her head forty blocks away. Forgave her because she called him in the first place. “You gotta admit, his instincts have been right on lately.”

“That’s different. *That’s* zeitgeist, not McCann.”

“Peggy.”

She sighed and after a minute said, “It’s the voice of moms all over again.” He didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but he got the gist. “I’ve tried so hard not to get completely pigeon-holed. And now what… ‘Embrace it, Peggy.’”

McCann had a reputation as Irish thugs; Peggy could still pull off an impression of a good Catholic girl when it suited her. He could see where this was going. “Get in a cab and come up here.”

“I have some work to do, and I need to think.”

“Come on. You have to take care of yourself.”

“I have the blanket on the couch, I’ll be fine. But if you’re still mad about dinner, you can bring me breakfast in the morning,” Peggy said magnanimously.

“Baby, that kid is going to come out made of danish.”

“Coffee too.”

Stan grunted. When he hung up a few minutes later, the cat was eying him from the end of the bed as he stubbed out his cigarette. "Tomorrow," he said, and patted the empty space next to him for the ginger tom to curl up in, before he turned out the light.


End file.
